China attacks global warming
Posted by Staff (07/05/2010 @ 11:09 am)
There’s plenty of good news and bad news in this post. The good news is that Chinese officials are taking global warming seriously. The bad news is they might be fighting a losing battle as more Chinese consumers gobble up more and more energy.
China’s thirst for Iraqi oil
Posted by Staff (04/01/2010 @ 4:51 pm)
BusinessWeek has a great article explaining China’s investment in the oil fields of Iraq.
BP is the largest partner in the venture, but only by a dipstick: It has a 38% stake, while the Chinese hold 37% (the rest is owned by an Iraqi company). The media focus has been on BP’s decision to take up the Rumaila challenge for a low fee of only $2 for every barrel the venture produces. But the more important story could be China’s role. “CNPC’s involvement brings together the country with the most rapid growth in energy demand in history with the country that plans the greatest buildup of production capacity ever,” says Alex Munton, an Iraq specialist at Edinburgh-based oil consultants Wood Mackenzie.
There’s also some interesting information about China’s commitment to training workers who can work in the oil industry.
China is the low-cost provider in the industry. “As a general rule of thumb, Chinese management and labor costs are about one-third if not one-fourth of Western costs,” says Gao, the ex-CNOOC executive. Nine colleges and universities focus exclusively on oil studies in China: “The Chinese treat the industry as a life-and-death issue,” says Gao. The Western oil industry’s workforce is aging rapidly. “Analysts always mention that the oil majors face personnel shortages,” says Xu Xiaojie, an independent oil and gas adviser in Beijing. “In China we have a surplus.”
The Iraq ventures still face formidable obstacles—sectarian strife, corruption, and government instability, among them. The Iraqis also may not welcome large numbers of Chinese to their fields. “Yes, bringing in low-cost engineers is China’s advantage,” says Trevor Houser, a partner at the Rhodium Group, a New York-based research firm that studies India and China. “But that has created tensions [elsewhere]. Look at Zambia, where an election was pretty much fought over China.”
It will be interesting to see this play out.
Posted in: Economy, Energy, Labor, Manufacturing, Technology, Trade
Tags: BP, Chinese labor costs, Chinese oil companies, Iraq and China, oil industry, Rumaila, workers in oil industry, Zambia

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Posted by Gerardo Orlando (11/07/2006 @ 4:17 pm)
Posted in: Energy

Hunt for oil
Posted by Gerardo Orlando (10/31/2006 @ 4:41 pm)
The Chinese are being very aggressive in Africa Pineapple Express divx
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looking for more sources of oil:
Just how wild is the bidding for good oil acreage these days? Over-the-top wild, to judge by a late May auction of tracts in the Congo Basin, off the coast of Angola. To land the licenses needed to explore three deepwater zones, oil companies from Italy, China, and elsewhere offered to pay an astronomical $3.1 billion in up-front fees (known in the industry as signature bonuses), plus $240 million to build schools and other social projects for the impoverished African country. To give a sense of the price inflation involved, in 1999, Angolan tracts in even deeper water brought in up to $350 million. The May bids were “the highest ever offered for exploration acreage anywhere in the world,” says Catriona O’Rourke, an analyst at Edinburgh consultants Wood Mackenzie, which has published an analysis of data provided by the Angolans.
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Posted in: Energy
